Nine is Never Enough

The Cat Oh Nine tails is adorable with its pink and black braided falls and woven handle. It's thirty-two inches of thin, fragrant leather. It's shiny and smooth. It has nine falls, each with a wide, triangular black leather tip. It's light and easy to wield. Great for travel and beginners. But extreme S&Mers might find it a bit wanting.

What's cool about floggers is that they're so versatile. You can use them to hurt or tease or massage just by changing how hard you swing them. Different designs have different purposes. For example, this particular flogger, in theory, because of its wide tips, should provide more of a punch-like sensation in use, while a flogger with thin, angled tips like this Leather Strap Whip, by Spartacus, is meant to feel more stingy, not unlike a switch or a slap.

Floggers are probably one of the more difficult impact toys to use, second to a bullwhip. There's more to them than simply aim and swing, such as technique and timing. And if you're not careful, they can get wrapped around body parts and chair legs. But once you get the hang of it, you'll easily find your own rhythm and style.

This flogger's long enough for self-flagellation. It's strong enough for long, drawn out sessions. And it's nice enough looking that you'll enjoy taking it out to events and play parties with you. The braided tails are more stingy than thuddy. Even the tips, wide as they are, don't provide much thud. However, the sting isn't really all that terrible either, making this toy exceptional for anyone dabbling in S&M, except, perhaps, those who consider themselves extreme.

Let me start by saying this flogger isn't quite as pink as it looks in the enlarged photo. It's not quite pastel pink, but not quite salmon, either. And the outer surface is shiny and stiff, looking more like vinyl than leather.

All told, the Cat Oh Nine Tails is thirty-two inches long. The nine falls are about twenty-three inches of braided pink and black leather. The handle is nine inches long and covered with woven pink and black leather as well. On the end of the handle is a braided pink and black leather wrist strap. The falls and wrist strap appear to be glued inside the black woven leather on either end of the handle.

Each of the falls are threaded through a hole in what appears to have been a circle-shaped piece of black leather folded in on itself and glued in place so that there are four sections to each. These form the tips of the tails.

The leather this toy is made of is extremely fragrant. I can smell the toy when it's sitting a foot or so away from me. That's pretty awesome. However, it's also very thin (not much more than a millimeter or so in thickness), which would be a problem if the falls weren't braided. The leather would tear rather easily then.

All in all, this appears to be a rather well-made toy. There are no gaps in the braided falls or the weave on the handle. The way Ruff Doggie Styles chose to attach the black tips will probably ensure that they don't come off easily. And while the falls stretch if you pull on them (all leather does), they seem to be attached to the handle rather well.

My biggest complaint with the design, as it often seems to be, is that, weighing in at 6.4 ounces, this toy is just too light. The falls are much lighter than the handle, so the toy isn't balanced all that well. And one of the falls is an inch longer than the rest.

Well, it's loud, but almost all impact toys are. It's comfortable to hold and easy to swing. And it holds together well.

The added weight of the black tips makes up, somewhat, for the unbalanced nature of this toy. I think without the black tips, these falls would go awry regardless of the accuracy of the wielder, but since they are there, they tend to pull the falls out straight.

But this design screams "thuddy toy" and there just is no thud to speak of. It's excruciatingly light, so even with a great amount of force, it's difficult to get a lot of "oomph" behind it. And while you can get it spinning pretty fast, and it sings quite nicely, even the sting isn't really all that bad.

I hear ya. "Rayne, you like the Delrin Cane." But I can still tell the difference between excruciating pain and barely a bite. This toy falls somewhere closer to the latter.

We store all our floggers laying flat in a dresser drawer, but some people hang them on the wall. We rarely play with other people, so we just wipe away any fluids that find their way onto our leather toys, or wash them with Saddle Soap if the need arises. If you find your leather drying out, some sort of leather conditioner is in order, but we find that frequent use keeps the leather supple and soft. Just try to avoid water or damp areas, and be sure it's completely dry before storing if it gets wet. Otherwise, it might mold.

The falls are just about the perfect length, but they're entirely too light, making it difficult to get much heft behind them. Unfortunately, the handle is much heavier than the falls, leaving the toy a little unbalanced. The best remedy for this, I think, would be adding more falls.

Rayne's Opinion:

This toy seems pretty well-made. It looks and smells rather nice. There are no gaps in the braiding on the handle or the falls. The pieces of black leather at the bottom look as though they're going to take a great deal of abuse before falling off.

However, there's next to no punch behind this toy. Because of how light the falls are, it's almost all sting, and there isn't much of that, either. Even when M managed a blow with all the falls in a bunch (which, due to the wide tips, should feel almost literally like a punch), there was next to no thud.